Tuesday Final Nationals: ‘Hard Knocks’ on HBO Delivers Second-Best Season Premiere in Five Years

It was another summer Tuesday of dominance for NBC. The combination of “America’s Got Talent” and the season-finale of “World of Dance” resulted in a solid win on August 8th in total viewers (11.57 million), adults 18-49 (2.5 rating/10 share), adults 18-34 (1.5/8) and adults 25-54 (3.2/11).

The thirteenth season premiere telecast of HBO’s football docu-series “Hard Knocks,” featuring training camp with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, delivered 671,000 viewers, which is the second-best mark for a “Hard Knocks” season premiere in five years. (The Houston Texans in 2015 posted 826,000 viewers).

The Buccaneers rose 32 percent from the L.A. Rams’ Hard Knocks opener from one year ago (509,000 viewers on Aug. 9, 2016), although that telecast had aired opposite the first Tuesday night of the Rio Summer Olympics.

Douglas Pucci (a.k.a. “Son of the Bronx”) has worked with Mr. Berman for more than a decade. A Bronx native, NYU graduate and once-intern for VH1's "Pop Up Video," Pucci went on to design, build and maintain websites for various non-profit organizations in his hometown of New York City. He also contributes to the sports website Awful Announcing.